It’s been more than a month since Dr. William Zoghbi found out about a nomination that by most measures is an opportunity of a lifetime. And the countdown to the real thing has begun.

On Monday, July 9, dressed in white, Dr. Zoghbi will relay the Olympic torch through a historic English town called Bicester.

“This is a very exciting opportunity,” said Dr. Zoghbi, who became the president of American College of Cardiology (ACC) earlier this year. “No matter how you try to imagine it, the experience would be different. But I can imagine a lot of people around me cheering me on, and your life story goes in front of you and you think about your aspirations for the future. It will be an exhilarating moment.”

The 56-year-old grew up in Lebanon. He said if it weren’t for the war, he probably wouldn’t have come to the United States in the late 1970s. “My life would have been quite different,” he said during a phone interview.

In the cheering crowd there will be his wife, his brother coming from Beirut, his friends from England and from ACC. He gets to keep the torch after his 300-meter run (roughly 0.2 miles), and he said he’s planning to display it at the Heart House, the ACC headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Zoghbi is the first from ACC to carry the Olympic torch. He is one of 22 selected by the Coca Cola Company because of his personal and professional dedication to promoting healthy lifestyles and for empowering civic engagement in communities, according to ACC. He will be representing ACC and the organization’s patient education portal, CardioSmart.

“Carrying the torch is a symbol of health in general, both mind and body,” said Dr. Zoghbi. “And my advice to physicians is that in addition to doing all the beautiful things that they do, to also think about the population in general and engage with their community in improving cardiovascular health.”

The 70-day Olympic Torch Relay leads to the Olympics Opening Ceremony on July 27. Lit in Greece, the Torch is carried by 8,000 selected participants who run through 1,000 towns and cities in the United Kingdom.

And we had to ask Dr. Zoghbi: “What is your favorite Summer Olympics sport?” Soccer, he responded. But when we asked him which team he was pulling for, he said with a laugh, “That’s a secret.”